Hastings and Rye select Sarah Owen

Back to Black? The return of In The Black Labour

18 months ago Anthony Painter, Hopi Sen and Adam Lent released their pamphlet “In the Black Labour”, which generated a substantial amount of coverage after calling for Labour to embrace “fiscal conservatism”. Now they’ve written a follow up essay, entitled “Moving Labour ‘into the black’”, which argues that: Labour should not do an about-turn on fiscal policy and welfare as it did under pressure eighteen months ago. The leadership needs to go further than recent speeches – publish fiscal rules [...]

What’s my name again? Obama calls Osborne “Jeffrey” three times at G8

There’s a damning report in The Sun this morning that Barack Obama repeatedly referred to George Osborne as “Jeffrey” during the G8, suggesting that Osborne’s management of the British economy hasn’t turned him into a globe straddling economic colossus. Who knew? The Sun believe that Obama was confusing George Osborne with singer Jeffrey Osborne, and produced the following (via Guido Fawkes): Yet we think there might be someone else that Osborne reminds Obama of. An English guy called not Jeffrey, [...]

The propaganda of the class war

By Emma Burnell

I have become fascinated by Made in Chelsea. Not by the storylines or characters. I honest couldn’t care less if Binky is going out with Proudlock, or whether Ollie is gay or straight (or if the concept of bisexuality ever makes it to SW3), though I was surprised to find that Fran and Cheska were two separate people. Given that this is supposed to be reality TV, the most extraordinary thing is how bad the acting is. If you were [...]

Why Labour is fighting for the legalisation of Humanist marriages today

By Glenys Thornton

Monday saw the first day of Committee on the Same Sex Marriage Bill, where it became clear after a three hour debate on how to distinguish Same Sex Marriage from so called “traditional” marriage that opposition to this bill has not gone away. Despite a huge defeat on Second Reading, opponents reheated and repeated their earlier speeches, in part because their arguments rely on belief and prejudice not evidence or fact. So we sat until 11pm debating conscience clauses, Registrars [...]

Sometimes what is unsaid at PMQs is the most important thing of all…

By Mark Ferguson

Well that was a bad PMQs for Ed Miliband – the second in a row. Perhaps he hasn’t gotten back into his stride after such a long period without the weekly Wednesday joust, but whatever it is, Miliband isn’t hitting his marks at PMQs. Meanwhile Cameron – who has been jousting with world leaders this week – seemed far more o top of his game than we’ve been used to seeing him lately. Alas the problem for Miliband was that [...]